Observations and reflections from Tibor R. Machan, professor of business ethics and writer on general and political philosophy, now teaching at Chapman University in Orange, CA.

Friday, August 19, 2005

Column on Karl May & Arab Strife

Karl May and the History of Arab Strife

Tibor R. Machan

When as a kid in Europe I devoured that peculiar German author?s, KarlMay?s, novels?about American Indians (Winnetou is his most famous) and theNear East (In the Desert toping the list here)?I had no idea that muchlater in my life May?s research and the information conveyed in his bookswould come in very handy. But I remembered enough from back then to takeanother look recently at some of May?s work because, as I recalled, heseemed to have a very detailed understanding of what he wrote about. Turnsout, he did, in fact, do the research so diligently that many came toadmire him for his historical accuracy. Among these were Albert Einstein,Albert Schweitzer, Isaac Asimov, and, embarrassingly, Adolph Hitler. Allin all May appears to have been obsessed with getting it right about aculture if he was to write about it, even in a fictional work.

What in our current geopolitical climate brought Karl May?s writingsabout the Near East to my mind? I think one particular passage will helpone appreciate this. In the novel, In The Desert, published in an Englishtranslation in 1977, by Seabury Press, and also, in 1980, by Bantam Books,May has his hero, Kara Ben Nemsi (which I believe means Karl fromGermany), roam around the Middle East in the 1870s, taking his readersthroughout the Ottoman Empire, sampling the customs, laws, religions, andideologies of all the various peoples as he embarks upon his innumerableadventures (which make his books so appealing to kids).

The following longish passage will probably explain why I think May?swork has relevance and serves as something of a cautionary tale forcurrent events.

Quite apart from the ruins of the Assyrian and Babylonian empires, sovisible at every step, there now rose before my eyes the mountains alongwhose slopes and valleys people had lived whose racial and religious tiescan only be disentangled with the greatest difficulty. Lightextinguishers, fire worshipers, devil worshipers, Nestorians, Chaldeans,Sunnites, Shiites, Mutazilites, Wahabes, Arabs, Jews, Turks, Armenians,Syrians, Druzes, Kurds, Persians, Turkomans. At almost any moment, one mayencounter a member of these tribes, peoples, and sects, and who can guardagainst the mistakes, lapses, and even transgressions a stranger maycommit on such an occasion! Even today these mountains stream with theblood of the victims of national hatred, religious zeal, lust forconquest, breach of faith, predatory instincts, and blood feuds. Humanhabitations cluster along the rocks and in the ravines like vultures?nests, a bird always ready to pounce on its unsuspecting prey. Here,suppression and remorseless exploitation have created that bitterness thatcan barely distinguish any longer between friends and foe, and the wordsof reconciliation and love proclaimed by the apostles have been utterlylost. And if American missionaries talk of their successes here, that canonly have been superficial. The ground is not ready to receive the seed.Whatever other men of God may do, the most hostile currents combine inwild rapids in the mountains of Kurdistan, and the waters will only calmagain when a powerful fist succeeds in smashing the cliffs that cause thewhirlpools, when the hatred has been eradicated and the ugly feudingstamped out. Then the path will be open to those who preach peace andproclaim salvation. Then no inhabitant of these mountains will any longerbe able to say: ?I became a Christian because otherwise I would have beenbastinadoed by an aga.? And this aga was a strict Moslem.?

Not being a specialist in the history and sociology of Middle Easterncultures, I couldn?t on my own attest to whether May had it right. Nor doI share May?s idea of how things might calm down in the region. However,when one reads a work such as The Arab Mind, by the widely admired middleeastern scholar Ralph Patai (Hatherleigh Press, 2002), one cannot but comeaway convinced that May was onto something here.

Now I am not a cultural or, indeed, any other kind of determinist and soI do not believe in the currently fashionable ?clashes of cultures?approach to understanding the strife that?s been unleashed recently byterrorists from that region of the world. Nor do I hold to the notion thatin this strife only one side has perpetrated injustice galore. It would befoolish, though, to dismiss the strong influence that the type ofeducation and upbringing in certain societies have on the population. Itis even reasonable to assume that entire generations of children wouldbecome traumatized with the cruelties involved in how they are guidedtoward their adulthood.

At one time in the past, perhaps, the scenario and cultural climate KarlMay describes could be confined to that region of the globe but now, withoil having made these folks extremely wealthy, their form of life cannotbut become ripe for exportation. It is this, I think, that needs to bekept in mind, among many other matters, in order to appreciate what we arewitnessing and experiencing in our time and are likely to have hoveringabout for a long time to come.